The team's new president and general manager's strong preference would have been to continue dismantling remnants of the Bryan Colangelo era, but with Andrea Bargnani and Rudy Gay out of the picture, the team has been playing too well to simply start adding more attractive future assets by blowing up this roster.

The optics of demolishing a team leading its division and playing like the third-best, or, at worst, fourth best team in its conference – even one as terrible as the East – would be nearly impossible to sell.

The Raptors won again on Friday, in an ugly game, befitting the hideousness of the Atlantic Division, 95-83 over the Knicks. That moved Toronto to 6-3 since trading Rudy Gay and a game up over Boston.

Jonas Valanciunas was superb, collecting 16 points and a career-best 18 rebounds as he continues his strong play of late. DeMar DeRozan added 25, including eight in the fourth as the Raptors rallied from a five-point deficit.

“Tyson (Chandler) is a hell of a centre to play against and JV will not back down from anyone,” said Kyle Lowry, who had 15 points and 11 more assists. “It makes me proud.”

Andrea Bargnani scored 18 to lead a New York team missing star forward Carmelo Anthony and starting point guard Raymond Felton who both will miss Saturday's rematch in Toronto.

On Friday, the early going was some rather unpleasant basketball – unless you like turnovers and shots launched off of the side of the backboard.The Knicks led by nine at the half and each team committed 10 turnovers. It didn't get more appealing from there, though the miscues were cut substantially.

DeRozan had a big block on Tim Hardaway Jr., then scored at the other end to give Toronto a three-point lead midway through the fourth, its biggest to that point of the game.

Toronto has been one of the NBA's best teams in the final quarter of games, a far cry from recent history.

“Last year we were in a ton of late-game situations we couldn't pull out. We'd kind of fold. Let a big shot frustrate us,” said DeRozan. “Now we don't let any of that frustrate us.”

Not in the slightest. This group has figured out how to close contests, one of the trickier NBA skills. Even head coach Dwane Casey is shocked at how well these Raptors have played so far.

“(I'm) a little bit surprised. We're a little bit ahead of where I thought (they'd be),” Casey said before the game. “We've lost some games we should have won, won some games we shouldn't have. So it kind of all evens out, but I think we're playing better than I thought at this point and together, especially after a trade like it was. We've turned it around a little bit, but we're nowhere near where we can go in terms of growing as individuals or as a team.

“It's good for our program, but it doesn't mean a hill of beans at the end of the year if we stub our toe in late-February or we have a tough month of January.”

And that's the rub. Casey still thinks there are a few higher levels to hit with this group, while Ujiri is paid handsomely to deduce whether that's an accurate assumption.

Casey knows progress won't come overnight and isn't paying too much heed to leading the division at this point.

“It's still early. A lot of things good and bad can happen. I've been at this too long, I've seen it happen in one month. We're growing. We're not talking about playoffs, we're talking about getting better. We're talking about improvement. If we do those things, everything else will take care of itself,” he said.

One thing he or his players won't be doing – as they've avoided so far – is paying any attention to talk of whether the franchise should go into the tank for a top prospect.

“Nobody believed me when I said we're talking winning. Going in trying to tell those players we're tanking, you'd probably get kicked out of the room and rightfully so,” Casey said. “That's their job, their profession. They could care less about tanking or hearing the word tanking.”

And there's no time to worry about who is or isn't on the trade block.

“I'm going to coach the guys that Masai and the front office puts in front of me,” he said. “(Ujiri has to) decide long-term goals and the vision that they have. I tell the staff, we have to coach these guys like they're going to be here five years. Discipline a culture. We have to do our job and be professional, coach and teach.”

But with the East so shoddy, the new plan for the season could also be to make it to the playoffs and see what happens. With Atlanta's Al Horford possibly being out for the rest of the regular season, depending on the results of an MRI on his possibly torn pectoral, suddenly, Toronto has a real shot at earning the East's third seed, let alone the division crown.

So compete the Raptors shall. Even though one year of success might not be in the best long-term interests of the franchise.

Remember, we saw this movie back in 2006-07. If a repeat comes to pass, the trick for Ujiri will be adding on to what he decides to keep and doing a far better job of it than Colangelo managed.

BARGS HAS BITE AGAINST OLD TEAM

The media had mused with Dwane Casey earlier in the day that Andrea Bargnani, famous for rarely showing any emotion, might not come out aggressive like many players do against their former teams. We were wrong, the coach correct, because Bargnani was ultra-motivated. He had nine rebounds at the half, matching the best full-game total of a year ago, and was giving defenders fits with his fakes, getting to the rim at will. Even his busted three-point shot returned with a vengeance, as the native of Rome nailed both of his three attempts. It was his best shooting performance since mid-November and the first time he’s shot over 50% from three-point range since then.
“We should know what he does and guard him accordingly,” Casey had said. That didn’t come to pass. They knew he was going right, yet he got there just about whenever he wanted to.
Though Bargnani didn’t do much in the second half, only Tim Hardaway Jr. Had a better night for the Knicks overall.

Surging Raptors take down Knicks

The team’s new president and general manager’s strong preference would have been to continue dismantling remnants of the Bryan Colangelo era, but with Andrea Bargnani and Rudy Gay out of the picture, the team has been playing too well to simply start demolishing.